God speaks in various ways and at various times. Always, when I am seeking Him (yes, even when He is silent, He is “speaking” to me) but also when I am not. And today, He spoke while I was spacing out in the shower after a very long 5-day stretch of waking up at 6am and sleeping at midnight with no naps in between! 😉
In the past 9 days, 3 people whom I have never met or known personally told me that they have been blessed by my sharing on this blog. Obviously they must have been referring to my old posts since I blog very sporadically now. In fact there was a 4 month lapse between the last two posts prior to this post (excluding the post about The Beginning of the End conference)! Today’s sweet compliment was from a lady who shared my blog with her niece-in-law! Imagine that!
And so while spacing out in the shower and at the same time marvelling at how God has used this blog to encourage mothers, even with my sporadic postings, God’s still small voice said ever so clearly to my spirit, “Be faithful in doing the things I have called you to do.” It took me by surprise as I was not expecting God to be saying anything to me at that time.
As I mulled over His words, I immediately assumed that He was referring to the PSLE* examinations that had just finished yesterday, 30th September (Tuesday). I thought it was God’s way of reassuring me that no matter what the results are, I am to continue to be faithful to what He has called me to do. He will take care of the details.
While that was correct – He will take care of the details and I am to be faithful in homeschooling – further mulling pointed out that it didn’t seem to be in the correct context. Then it slowly dawned upon me (I blame that on brain fog and extreme tiredness!) that He was not referring to homeschooling. He was referring to Him calling me to start blogging way back in 2006 (See How this Blog Got Started). Even as I had been faithful homeschooling (amidst the grumbling and whining) I had not been faithful to keep on blogging.
Oh ,I had all sorts of valid reasons – everyone would agree that raising children, homeschooling, and cooking from scratch with 7 children is a handful. But the fact of the matter is that I have not made blogging a priority at all.
It was the easiest thing to push aside. Homeschooling had to be done or schoolwork gets piled up and children go mad from lack of direction and purpose. Cooking had to be done or we would starve or had allergy breakouts from too many MacDonald’s delivery and zhi char**. But blogging? Because I had no “boss”, I had no deadline to meet and so it was easy to keep hiding behind the label “busy” and just neglect it. Also, I had been so very distracted with our health issues that I spend way more time researching and listening to health podcasts than praying and writing 🙁
But His voice today made it clear that I need to be faithful and obedient to do what He has called me to do, especially in these last days. Echoing the clarion call of Henson‘s new ministry, Archippus Awakening, I am to take heed to fulfill the ministry the Lord has called me to do. (Colossians 4:17). I don’t want to be standing in front of Him and telling Him all the other things I did which were nice, good things but not what He asked me to do. That would still be disobedience!
And so, the purpose of this long, long story is to encourage us all to be faithful in fulfilling the ministry/ies or assignment/s God has given each of us. We need to keep on keeping on.
I can’t promise that I’ll blog weekly or even monthly – maybe some of you may even unsubscribe when I increase my postings! – but I will make it a point to post more regularly 😉
And thank you once again for reading and for your encouraging comments and private emails. May you flourish where The Lord has planted you inspite of the thorns and the weeds.
* PSLE – Primary School Leaving Examinations is a national level examination that every Singaporean child aged 12 is required to take.
** Zhi Char would be the equivalent of Chinese takeout 😉